NOAA Data Citation Procedural Directive Version 1.0

Data citation involves data stewards assigning unique and persistent identifiers to data in order that data users can reference those identifiers when data are used in research or as inputs to assessments, models, or derived products. Data citation is similar in many respects to the long-established convention of citing publications, and is an evolving but increasingly important scientific practice. This Procedural Directive establishes the requirements for obtaining persistent identifiers for data archived at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the procedure for creating landing pages providing dataset information and access instructions, and the recommendations regarding citation of NOAA data by internal and external users. This Directive discusses the purpose and syntax of these identifiers, the appropriate level of granularity of a data collection, how to obtain an identifier, the content of the landing page, and the recommended data citation format. The NOAA Data Citation Procedural Directive, which was first approved by NOAA's Environmental Data Management Committee (EDMC) on May 15, 2015.